Comcast’s Fancast site offering for-pay downloads

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Comcast has now jumped into the downloadable video content game with the Fancast Store. It’s a lot like many other video download stores in that you can either rent or buy movies and TV shows, it requires you to install proprietary media management software in order to download and view your content, and it’s not Mac compatible (you can, however, order content from a Mac and download it on a PC later).

Purchasing content allows you to download it on up to three computers, while renting content ties you to whichever computer you use to download the content. Rented video files must be consumed within 30 days and, once initially played, must be watched within 24 hours or they’ll expire.

Dave Zatz suspects that “Amazon is the silent partner powering Fancast.” That seems more than reasonable since Amazon has talked about partnering with other companies before. Zatz is also quick to question whether or not downloading a 2+GB movie will count against Comcast broadband customers’ soon-to-be-imposed 250GB monthly cap. There’s no clear-cut answer to that question except that, as a current Comcast customer, yes, it will count against your monthly cap. I can guarantee that.

So it’s another movie and TV download service in a crowded marketplace full of already-existing movie and TV downloading services. Know what Comcast should do? I’ve got a nice, big, fat Ethernet port on the back of all of my Comcast boxes. What say we actually make it do something, huh? If I could hook my cable box up to this Fancast store, guess where I’d end up purchasing most of my downloadable content.

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OverviewLaunched by Comcast at January 2008's CES, Fancast serves as both a media guide for TV shows and movies, as well as a destination to watch full length and preview clips of professional content. Fancast has partnered with Hulu to offer content from NBC, Fox, CBS, MTV, and BET.
If Fancast doesn't stream the full-length content users are looking for, it will help them look for that content on …